Explicit minimal Scherk saddle towers of arbitrary even genera in R3\R^3

Starting from works by Scherk (1835) and by Enneper-Weierstra\ss \ (1863), new minimal surfaces with Scherk ends were found only in 1988 by Karcher (see \cite{Karcher1,Karcher}). In the singly periodic case, Karcher's examples of positive genera had been unique until Traizet obtained new ones in 1996 (see \cite{Traizet}). However, Traizet's construction is implicit and excludes {\it towers}, namely the desingularisation of more than two concurrent planes. Then, new explicit towers were found only in 2006 by Martin and Ramos Batista (see \cite{Martin}), all of them with genus one. For genus two, the first such towers were constructed in 2010 (see \cite{Valerio2}). Back to 2009, implicit towers of arbitrary genera were found in \cite{HMM}. In our present work we obtain {\it explicit} minimal Scherk saddle towers, for any given genus $2k$, $k\ge3$

Master of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics

XIX ENBE Annual Meeting of the Portuguese Association for Evolutionary Biology, 18-19 December 2023, Lisboninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Influence of feeding graded levels of canned sardines on the inflammatory markers and tissue fatty acid composition of Wistar rats

The present study was supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the grant PTDC-SAU/OSM/2006/70560 (principal investigator: P. O. R). S. V. M. is the recipient of a FCT individual fellowship SFRH/BPD/2009/63019 and P. A. L. is a researcher involved in the FCT programme 'Ciencia 2008'.Canned sardines are a ready-to-use fish product with excellent nutritional properties owing to its high n-3 long-chain PUFA content, mainly EPA (20 : 5n-3) and DHA (22 : 6n-3). The present study aimed to assess the effect of two dosages of canned sardines, recommended for the primary and secondary prevention of human CVD, on the inflammatory marker concentrations and fatty acid composition of erythrocytes and key metabolic tissues (liver, muscle, adipose tissue and brain) in the rat model. Wistar rats were fed a diet containing 11\% (w/w) of canned sardines (low-sardine (LS) diet) and a diet containing 22\% (w/w) of canned sardines (high-sardine (HS) diet) for 10 weeks. Daily food intake, weight gain, and organ and final body weights were not affected by the dietary treatments. The concentrations of total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol decreased in both the LS and HS groups, while those of alanine aminotransferase and adiponectin increased. The concentrations of IL-1 beta increased only with the highest dosage of sardine. The dose-dependent influence of the graded levels of EPA+DHA was tissue specific. Compared with that of other tissues and erythrocytes, the fatty acid composition of the brain was less affected by the canned sardine-supplemented diets. In contrast, the retroperitoneal adipose tissue was highly responsive. The deposition ratios of EPA and DHA indicated that the LS diet was optimal for DHA deposition across the tissues, except in the retroperitoneal adipose tissue. Taken together, our findings indicate that a LS diet positively affects plasma lipid profiles and inflammatory mediators, whereas a HS diet has contradictory effects on IL-1 beta, which, in turn, is not associated with variations in the concentrations of other pro-inflammatory cytokines. This finding requires further investigation and pathophysiological understanding.publishersversionpublishe

Padronização de ensaio imunoadsorvente ligado à enzima (ELISA) para detecção de IgG contra antígenos de larvas e glândulas salivares de Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi padronizar um novo ELISA, para avaliar a imunidade humoral, pela mensuração de IgG no soro de bovinos previamente expostos ao carrapato-do-boi, Rhipicephalus microplus, e fenotipados como susceptíveis ou resistentes ao parasita.Claudia Cristina Gulias Gomes, editora técnica

Land use change accounting for agriculture ? effects of including N2O and CH4 emissions.

The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Guidance is expected to be the main reference for land use change (LUC) accounting for companies seeking net-zero targets. This protocol requires an account for carbon dioxide (CO2) and also for methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions associated with LUC, which consider natural vegetation burning and, in the case of N2O, soil carbon mineralization. The Brazilian Land Use Change (BRLUC) method was developed to estimate direct LUC associated with Brazilian agricultural products and the resulting CO2 emissions (until now without N2O and CH4), being compatible with the main international life cycle assessment (LCA) and Carbon Footprint protocols. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of including both N2O and CH4 on total LUC GHG emissions to support the decision to include them in BRLUC. The IPCC and GHG Protocol guidelines were followed to estimate them, considering the 64 Brazilian agricultural crops. Among the parameters considered, the natural vegetation burning area is a difficult parameter to obtain due to the limitation of data on the burned area. Thus, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to minimize these missing data. In most land conversion types, N2O and CH4 emissions contribute together to an increase of less than 3% in total LUC GHG emissions. For example, on the national average, accounting for N2O and CH4 after the expansion of 1 ha of soybean, sugarcane and pasture over moderately degraded pasture or natural vegetation resulted in 1.2% to 2.0% increases in CO2 equivalent (CO2eq) emissions. The higher emissions occurred when these agricultural land uses expanded over improved pastures or natural grasslands (3.4% to 7.8% increases), still below 10%. But when considering the past 20-year Brazilian land conversion patterns, these land conversion types are rare, and N2O and CH4 impacts are even lower, increasing CO2eq emissions from soybean, sugarcane and pasture in 0.9%, 0.9% and 0.4%, respectively. The sensitivity analysis of the natural vegetation burning area showed that the variation in it resulted in a low impact on non-GHG emissions. For example, for natural vegetation, reducing the area burned from 88% to 44% (50% reduction) changed the impact of non-CO2 emissions on total GHG emissions from 2.0% to 1.1%. The overall results showed that N2O and CH4 had low impacts in LUC GHG emission accounting, lower than the minimum emissions accounting threshold, also referred to as the materiality threshold, of 5%. They also showed that varying parameters difficult to obtain, such as the burned area, also have low impacts. As gathering information and calculating LUC non-CO2 are not trivial tasks, we suggest that norms and protocols simplify the requirements to account for them and reduce the associated costs and time

NEUTRALIZING ANTIBODIES AGAINST FELINE HERPESVIRUS TYPE 1 IN CAPTIVE WILD FELIDS OF BRAZIL

Abstract: Feline herpesvirus type 1 infection affects domestic cats, causing mainly upper respiratory tract diseases. Although this infection has been described in captive and free-ranging wild felids from Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa, no information is available on its occurrence among wild felids of Brazil. In this study, 250 serum samples of six species of Brazilian captive wild felids (Leopardus tigrinus, Leopardus wiedii, Herpailurus yaguarondi, Puma concolor, Leopardus pardalis, and Panthera onca) were examined for neutralizing antibodies to feline herpesvirus type 1. Positive sera were found in 72% of L. tigrinus samples, 15% of L. wiedii, 6% of L. pardalis, 8% of H. yaguarondi, 18% of P. concolor, and 14% of P. onca. The relatively low percentages of seropositivity and low antibody titers found among the last five species suggest that feline herpesvirus type 1 does not circulate extensively among these animals. Nevertheless, quarantine, serologic screening, and vaccination of newly introduced felids is recommended in zoos in order to prevent virus transmission and outbreaks of the disease among wild felids kept in captivity